I learned Snobol from a short-course Mike taught through the Purdue computing center. I later used my skills to write a Shape Recognizer as a programming assignment.
Mike got a PhD for his work on the Snobol implementation for the CDC 6000 series.
Michael D. Shapiro
A SNOBOL Machine: Functional Architectural Concepts of a String Processor.
Advisor: M. H. Halstead, 1972. See Purdue PhDs 
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Mike wrote a device driver for the newly installed Clevite electrostatic printer. He then wrote a text processing system with with to write his thesis. This was the first computer printed thesis accepted at the university.